Accounting & Information Assurance Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2736
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Item Matchmaking or Information Leakage? Disclosure Benefits and Constraints of Corporate Job Advertisement Specificity(2018) Cao, Yi; Cheng, Shijun; Business and Management: Accounting & Information Assurance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the benefits and constraints of a special form of corporate voluntary disclosure—job advertisements. Using a novel dataset of over 8 million recruiting advertisements posted by public companies, I follow taxonomy theories and create a continuous measure of information specificity, based upon the level of descriptive detail of skill requirements in job advertisements. Consistent with the theory that labor market disclosure mitigates search frictions, I find job advertisement specificity positively predicts employee satisfaction, productivity, and corporate accounting performance and negatively predicts employee turnover rate. My results further suggest that job advertisement specificity provides incremental information about human capital intangibles and improves the value-relevance of accounting numbers. I also show that the information specificity is constrained by product market competition. Together, my results suggest job advertisement is an important voluntary disclosure channel and that the content of job advertisements is informative to capital- and product-market participants.Item Non-Investor Stakeholders and Earnings Benchmarks(2017) Wei, Sijing; Kimbrough, Michael D.; Business and Management: Accounting & Information Assurance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT A firm has numerous non-investor stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and potential business partners, who provide needed monetary and nonmonetary support to the firm. In Essay One, I provide empirical evidence on the previously untested theoretical prediction that these stakeholders’ views of a firm depend on its ability to meet relevant earnings benchmarks. Using published and proprietary reputation scores to capture stakeholder perceptions, I find in both levels and changes analyses that non-investor stakeholder perceptions are positively associated with a firm’s ability to beat relevant earnings benchmarks and that the relevant earnings benchmark for each stakeholder group varies based on the nature of its claim. Specifically, customer perceptions are positively associated with a firm’s ability to meet the profit benchmark. Potential business partner perceptions are positively associated with a firm’s ability to meet both the analyst forecast benchmark and the earnings growth benchmark. Employee perceptions are positively associated with a firm’s ability to meet the earnings growth benchmark. These findings highlight broader uses of and broader audiences for accounting information than previously documented. In Essay Two, I examine whether and how firms consider their non-investor stakeholders when prioritizing which earnings benchmarks to meet or beat. Using a sample of publicly traded firms from 1990 to 2015, I identify which non-investor stakeholder group (i.e. consumers, employees, or potential business partners) is most critical to a firm based on a stakeholder dependency score, which measures the extent to which a firm relies on a particular stakeholder group. I find that, regardless of which non-investor stakeholder group is most critical to the firm, firms beat the analyst forecast benchmark several times more frequently than they beat other benchmarks. Because the analyst forecast is the most important benchmark to the capital market, this finding indicates that managers place greater weight on investors’ preferences than on the preferences of their non-investor stakeholders when deciding which earnings benchmarks to meet or beat. Thus, capital market pressure appears to dominate the pressure from non-investor stakeholders. However, I also find that consumer-focused (employee-focused) firms meet or beat the profit benchmark (the increase benchmark) more often than non-consumer-focused firms (non-employee-focused firms) when the profit benchmark (the increase benchmark) is the most difficult to beat or when pre-managed earnings falls short of the associated benchmark. These results indicate that firms are more likely to meet or beat the specific earnings benchmark that is most relevant to a particular non-investor stakeholder group when that non-investor stakeholder group is most critical to the firm. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how managers incorporate non-investor stakeholders’ preferences in their decisions about which earnings benchmarks to meet or beat.Item International Financial Reporting Standards and Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions(2012) Zhu, Wenjie; Gordon, Lawrence A; Loeb, Martin P; Business and Management: Accounting & Information Assurance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the economic impact of global accounting harmonization. Particularly I focus on its influence on macro level cross-border M&A investments. I posit that mandatory IFRS adoption lowers the systemic information noise embedded in countries' accounting standards. This reduces the associated information processing costs and enhances the economic role accounting standards play on cross-border M&A flows. After mandatory IFRS adoption, a 1% increase in accounting standards disparity suppresses bilateral M&A flows by around 2%; decrease in accounting standards disparity helps promote bilateral M&A flows when paired countries' governance infrastructure gap is relatively wider. I do not find these associations significant prior to mandatory IFRS adoption. Overall, this dissertation documents an evolving economic role accounting standards play on bilateral cross-border M&A flows, and supports International Accounting Standards Board's advocacy in adopting a uniform set of accounting standards globally. Moreover, it further analyses the current adoption demand for IFRS from the U.S. firms.